The #NeverTrump people are what I like to call “radical moderates.” You can quibble about how “moderate” they really are relative to the Left-Right divide before Trump, but #NeverTrump goals are pretty moderate in my opinion. They want simply to protect our liberal democracy at any costs.
Abraham Lincoln, Radical Moderate
In a sense, they really do harken back to Lincoln. Father Abraham was the quintessential radical moderate. At his heart, he was pretty moderate, but in the severe crisis of the Civil War he made a very radical choice out of desperation: free the slaves so as to make the war one of liberation and Union, not just Union.
As such, because the United States is hurdling towards an existential choice of autocracy, military junta or civil war, it’s at least possible that for a moment in time everyone will be #NeverTrump — there will be a United Front with the leaders of the #NeverTrump at its head.
Should it happen, it will be astonishing on a political level because such a unification of political views has only happened one or twice in our history. I would say the Civil War and WW2 are the last times it happened. For AOC to join forces with someone as conservative as, say, Rick Wilson, under “radical moderate” rubric we would have to be suffering a very, very severe political crisis.
Now, as an aside, let me address something I’ve mentioned before – are #NeverTrumpers the modern equivalent of “War Democrats?” At the moment, they are. But the moment we’re facing the type of severe political crisis I fear we’re hurdling towards occurs, they will be something totally different — the vanguard of the the radical moderates.
In other words, the leadership of the people who will have the opportunity to finally destroy the scourge of the fascist MAGA New Right will come from the group of conservatives who are now #NeverTrumpers. The center-Left simply does not have that many leaders to use for such a cause. AOC is pretty good, but she’s still too young and untested.
I can think of half a dozen #NeverTrumpers who could provide crucial leadership for the — glup — war effort, should things get that bad.
Or, put another way, if the crisis grows as severe as I fear it will, instead of the current political situation where you have a huge center-Left then the #NeverTrumpers, you would have a United Front with the #NeverTrumpers providing the leadership.
But all of this is extremely speculative. I’m always wrong, at least to date. I’m just kind of sketching out possibilities given what usually happens in revolutions and civil wars
Sometimes, I grow very frustrated with Twitter liberals. They went to Harvard and shit and yet relative to what I, a mere hayseed rube Internet crank rando believe, they are completely clueless. A prime example of this is what’s going on with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis
All his thuggish behavior that is putting the lives of his own electorate in danger is exactly what not just the MAGA New Right base in Florida wants, but the NATIONAL MAGA New Right base wants in the abstract. The more thuggish he is, the better in their eyes.
They want autocracy. They want to “own the libs” no matter what the consequences are. And the more DeSantis’ political fortunes improve because of him being a demonstrable autocratic cocksucker, the more every elected Republican official who sees the next president when they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning will feel obliged to one up him.
Autocratic thuggery is now the sweet spot of modern Republican politics. Negative polarization is so absolute, so extreme now within Republican ranks that even the most overheated MAGA New Right fascist rhetoric could very well become policy once a Republican inevitable becomes president again. Then all my “doom shit” won’t look so hysterical.
Anyway, DeSantis knows what he’s doing. At this point, the only issue is if Trump co-ops him or the two of them have a political deathmatch to see who gets to be the first American autocrat.
Of course, 2025 is a long ways away. There are about a dozen other would-be autocrats who are going to fight like hell to get the chance to come to power in 2025 and….just never leave office for any reason. As such, DeSantis doesn’t have a complete lock on being our first true American Autocrat, but he’s definitely at the moment the chief contender.
We are so fucked. So very, very fucked.
I have no ready answers for you. I have no VOX Tik-Tok video spoken in formal Twitter liberal received English. I just have my two eyes and ears and simply “doom shit” logic to use.
We’re going to have to have some sort of United Front or hope we can get the type of radical moderate behavior that happened around the time Lincoln decided to free the slaves. Something gotta give. Something big has to happen, otherwise, DeSantis will become an American Augustus and establish a American Empire.
When it came to predicting the ultimate effects of COVI19, I did a fairly good job of predicting things. Where I made the biggest mistake was on how severe I thought it would be. Given how the Chinese government freaked the fuck out when it was first reported, I assumed it was far more deadly than it ultimately turned out to be.
Anyway.
Let’s look at why, specifically, I think we have three options — autocracy, civil war or military junta — before us between now and January, 2025.
The United States is far less politically stable than we appear. The MAGA New Right talks openly about how liberals are “forcing” them to become radical fascists. They talk in sometimes not-so-vague terms about how soon enough they’re going to embrace fascism once and for all and it will be all liberals’ fault.
When you begin to accept that the Republican Party is now nothing more than a modern version of Slave Power that will stop at nothing to protect its interests, then, lulz, you have a recipe for disaster on your hands. The Republican Party has officially embraced autocracy and minority rule as its path to perpetual power from here on out.
What did you do to defend democracy, daddy?
What bothers me the most about Twitter liberals is they continue to frame the behavior of notable MAGA New Right elected as if we had a functioning liberal democracy. This, sadly, is not the case. The very thuggish, autocratic things that people like Ron DeSantis advocate are the very things that make them popular with the anti-democratic Trumplandia base.
Now, the ironic thing about all of this is Trump is such an idiot moron that he could very well, simply by existing be the thing that prevents us from peacefully transitioning into an autocracy in all but name. He’s so popular — and yet such a fucking idiot — that what should otherwise be a very easy political transition to autocracy on America’s part may turn into one of the other two options I keep thinking about: civil war or military junta.
The United States has been so stable for so long that it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the idea that there might be a civil war here. A lot of people simply can’t grok it as a possibly at all. And, yet, according to all the metrics I keep in my mind about such things a civil war is definitely among the three options we face.
And now, we come to the great irony of all of this — the very same macro trends that could lead us to civil war, autocracy or a military junta — could very well simply give the MAGA New Right everything it wants without destroying our democracy.
For the moment, the center-Left is divided, fractious and ineffectual. America has been drifting towards a more conservative political center for about 50 years now. There’s every reason to believe that the Republican Party — even with the browning of America — could dominate American politics within the context of American political tradition for at least another generation if not more.
But they’re fucking greedy and want an autocracy because they lost the culture wars and they want to “own” the libs once and for all.
And, yet, once the MAGA New Right make shit existential for Leftist soyboys, they could very well have a lot more kick in them than expected. It’s human nature. Let me repeat that: IT’S FUCKING HUMAN NATURE.
The MAGA New Right Red States could very well make the same mistake about the Blue States that the Axis Powers made about the United States in late 1941. Red States think Blue States are “degenerates” who will collapse the moment there’s any political violence.
Surprise! That’s not true!
And, yet, this all raises the issue — why am I so certain that one of three unthinkable options will happen between now and around January 2025.
Besides the glorification of political violence on the Right, the hardening of the political divide and the death of politics in general, I would point to the coordinated efforts on the part of the Republican Party at the state and local level to highjack any election result they don’t like.
Sorry for the shitty quality.
Why give the Republican dominated legislature the right to take over local election certification if you don’t intend to use it? Why make it so fucking hard to vote if you don’t intend to abuse your ability to dissuade people from voting in general. I’m simply taking Republican anti-democratic moves both seriously and literally and then extrapolating from that.
A lot of the people who poo-poo my “doom shit” about our political future either refuse to realize that we’re no longer a functioning democracy or they would be the people who tuned out entirely once we become an autocracy and it becomes clear that it’s pointless to vote.
I’m beginning to think that maybe — just maybe — when we finally face the options of civil war or autocracy the U.S. Military will step in and tell everyone to cool it. We may live under military rule for a few months — years? — but in the end all that will happen is there will be a Constitutional Convention that sorts out all our structural issues and then we move on without a lot of bloodshed.
Doom Shit
But, in general, the macro trends are definitely drifting towards Something Big happening no later than January 2025. At this point, in my mind, the biggest known unknown is if Trump will still be politically viable enough to fuck everything up so we start killing each other for political reasons.
The guy above is one of a few MAGA New Right “thought leaders” who establish the talking points that will be watered down and disseminated throughout the Right wing bullshit echo chamber. These now far more palatable talking points will be parroted by your conservative relatives at, say, Thanksgiving Dinner.
That’s why such people like Kurt Schlichter are actually far more important than you might think. Even though some of what they rant about is nothing more than bad faith bullshit meant to “own the libs,” usually the general drift of rhetoric on their part does give you some sense of what they actually believe.
As such, it definitely seems as though the on-going fascist radicalization of the Republican Party continues. And, as I’ve mentioned before, it definitely seems as though should Republicans ever gain power again — they’re never going to peacefully give it up.
These days, I vacillate widely between thinking that when the MAGA New Right autocracy finally is established that things aren’t going to change the much for a while, to thinking there’s going to immediately be a civil war and or military junta established.
It’s possible that when the autocratic white Christian ethno state is finally established, the Republicans will drift towards a Russian style autocracy, but, at first things won’t change that much. There will be excesses — like the media will be purged — but for the time being people like me will be allowed to continue to rant about what fucking cocksuckers the MAGA New Right is.
Though, truth be told, if it’s Mike Pompeo who is our autocrat, that may not last very long –that guy is a real asshole who, once president, will be just as corrupt and autocratic as Putin has ever been.
Anyway, back to Schlichter. His Twitter thread definitely gives us a sense of what we’re up against. It’s not like they’re hiding their vision for America. All I can compare it to is how Hitler wrote a whole fucking book laying out exactly what he was going to do….and then he did it.
I can’t predict the future, but the macro trends definitely indicate that the conditions are there for at some point between now and January, 2025, there is going to be some sort of catalyst that forces us to make the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta.
The Right, as exemplified by Schlichter are locked and loaded to strike Blue States on an ideological basis. They’ve established what they’re going to do and why they’re going to do it. But it hasn’t happened yet. Something would have to happen for me not to think we’re just going to peacefully transition into autocracy.
12/27: Trump threatens Rosen to replace DOJ leadership + install Clark 12/28: Clark sends draft GA letter to Rosen 01/02: Rosen says won’t sign 01/03: Clark tells Rosen: Trump has decided to fire him and make Clark the A.G. 01/03: DOJ threatens mass resignation; Trump backs down https://t.co/QaggTbS3SE
The key issue — the one that set up Pence to save American democracy for about four years — is “1/03: DOJ threatens mass resignation; Trump backs down.” It is a testament to how Trump has always been playing himself that he backed down at that point.
A true Great Man would have pushed ahead, despite mass resignation. The autocrat is willing to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — see, also, how Hitler handled the SA — while an idiot ding-dong like Trump goes through all the trouble of getting to that point then backs down.
By January 3, 2021, it was well established that on a political level, Trump was above the law. Nothing, in real terms, would have happened to him if there were mass DOJ resignations. He could have easily gotten what he wanted — to stay in power — and the mass resignations would have been seen as just a blip. This would especially been the case once he was in second term and he could simply purge the media to control the narrative of how he secured a second term.
That, at least, is what an actual autocrat would have done.
The question is, will it be Trump that attempts to shepard us into autocracy in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe, or will it be someone far more adept like Ron DeSantis? But as I keep saying, we have three options ahead of us as of the moment: autocracy, civil war or military junta.
Who organized the Pence Gallows in front of the Capitol? Sometimes, the biggest tell about an event comes from something we simply take for granted. In this case, it took some planning to set up a gallows for Pence on January 6th. That thing didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. It suggests that there was a specific point to the insurrection — scare the shit out of Mike Pence so he wouldn’t certify the vote.
Why did Trump give Jim Jordan the Medal of Freedom on January 11? Again, it’s easy to dismiss this by saying Jordan was such a long-term toady of Trump’s that of course he would get the Medal of Freedom before Trump left office. And, yet, the case could be made that Jordan did something specific in that prompted Trump in his zero-sum-game mind to feel compelled to give Jordan a “gift” in exchange for…what? Silence? Actively fucking up any investigation into what happened January 6th? Why did a Proud Boy leader visit Trump in the days before January 6th? This is one of those things where what actually happened is kind of nebulous. Did a Proud Boy leader get a tet-a-tete with Trump in the White House? What did they talk about? There are a lot of conflicting stories about all of this, but someone needs to ask some questions to figure out what happened. How much did Trump know about the plot for January 6th? It is reasonable to believe that Trump was the driving force for what happened on January 6th….but just like with the Russia conspiracy stuff, it was probably very chaotic and haphazard. Trump probably would dip in to a meet every once in a while to give “his people” a general goal then wonder off. This gives him legal “plausible deniability” because all he had to do was incite the mob — he likely didn’t know exactly that was going to happen. He just knew there was a good chance they would attack to Capitol in such a way that it could scare the shit out of Pence so he didn’t do his job.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is very, very popular with my conservative relatives. The origin of his popularity is he is perceived as a “fighter” who attacks “the libs” on every front for any reason.
This is probably the most destructive of Trump’s legacies and the thing that could ultimately be his political downfall. My theory is this — now that Trump has established the blueprint for being a successful Republican politician, he no longer serves much purpose for his many, many would-be autocratic successors.
Trump, unto himself, is a blockage in our now inevitable transition into autocracy. Trump is just a big old ding-dong who is way too lazy and idiotic to successfully shepherd us into autocracy. His would be younger, more focused — and potentially more bloodthirsty successors, however — don’t have those problems.
As such, it is within the realm of possibility that there will come a political tipping point where people like DeSantis support Trump’s political demise because he’s outlived his usefulness. He has shown the path to autocracy, but doesn’t have the good sense to get out of their way, so they’ll be there throwing punches when the end comes, if it ever does.
Or, put another way, DeSantis, specifically, is growing popular enough that either Trump tries to co-op him by naming him is 2024 veep or he’s able to destroy Trump should the two have at it at last.
At the moment, DeSantis appears popular because he holds out the promise of MAGA without Trump. A lot — A LOT — of people who support the craven, racist ideals of MAGA can’t defend Trump and DeSantis gives them an out. In their mind, if the debate over MAGA is strictly one over polices — and not the fascist and ethical implications of it all — it’s a win.
They point is — as I keep saying, America is an autocracy without an autocrat. Once the autocrat is in position, we’re probably just going to transition into an autocracy and that will be that. There is a chance, of course, that either the military steps in or we have a civil war or both.
I can’t predict the future, I don’t know.
But at the moment, DeSantis has it within his power to destroy Trump. It will be interesting to see if he uses it, or allows himself to be co-oped.
These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine would say. The reason is, we now are confronted with the cold, hard fact that every election we have now is existential — if Republicans gain power again, they’re unlikely to ever peacefully give it up.
Combine this with Republicans’ growing glorification of political violence as a means to an end and their blaming of liberals for “forcing” them to radicalize and you have a recipe for disaster.
In the end, we either have a civil war with the specific objective of destroying the Republican Party or we slip into autocracy peacefully. At the moment, that’s what I think is going to happen. It will become political conventional wisdom that that Republicans — one way or another — always win the presidency, people stop voting and ta-da autocracy.
The only reason why I’m willing to entertain then notion of a civil war in even abstract terms is the MAGA New Right’s alarming, and growing, glorification of political violence. They keep ranting on Twitter that their fascist radicalization is the fault of liberals who “just won’t leave them alone.” Jesus, what a bunch of fucking cocksuckers.
We have to begin to gird our loins for the very real possibly that the otherwise peaceful transition into autocracy will somehow be bungled and we do, in fact, have a civil war. The North’s, er, I mean, Blue States‘ war aims should be: destruction of the Republican Party, a just and equable Reconstruction of the former Red States then a Constitutional Convention.
In short, we would need to renew the American Covent that has we last forged in 1865.
But, again, because the method that the MAGA New Right intends to use to initially turn us into an autocracy — the whole throwing things into Congress — is actually in the Constitution, that’s enough hook for the press to shrug and tell everyone to calm down.
The way the MAGA New Right might bungle things is if they are so aggressive and ham-handed in their efforts to win that people see it for what it is, then, well, the country is going to buckle and a civil war will start.
I find myself these days thinking a lot about what the U.S. Military will do should our transition to an autocracy somehow be bungled and it’s clear we’re going to have a civil war. I’m beginning to think rather than a civil war, the U.S. Military would step in — acting President Jim Mattis, anyone? — and that would be the way, ultimately, things would be sorted out.
The U.S. Military is the one remaining institution with the means, motive an opportunity to save us from ourselves.
So, I guess there are three, not two, choices facing us: autocracy, civil war or military junta.
No matter how much the modern Slavocrats may think they can defeat the “woke” soyboys of the Blue States simply by starting a dumb, tragic Second American Civil war, they face a huge fucking obstacle to any such victory: California.
The thing that would make California a new “arsenal of democracy” should a civil war break out is its economy, population and unified polity. It’s a big enough state that it, itself, is a nation. This is where it becomes VERY OBVIOUS how fucking stupid a civil war would be. If you look at what the war aims of the Red States would be, they’re very self defeating.
How could Texas and / or Florida fight back against a California plains state blitzkrieg if they’re fighting a fucking race war? The MAGA New Right wants to establish a white Christian entho state — not something that really engenders a lot of support from POC.
The Liberators
As such, if you can just get California to stay in the Union, you put the state on a war footing as quickly as possible, secure Oregon and Washington then race across the mountain and plains states to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Texas would likely be suffering from an intra-state civil war so you catch them on the back foot. The fighting would be horrific, but California would win. At the same time you have another horrific battle in Ohio and Indiana, but the momentum would be on Blue State’s side.
If things have gotten THIS BAD –where is the Federal government and U.S. Military? — then a race war has erupted in most of the old CSA. you do a peincer movement heading west and south in hopes of hooking up with Atlanta which is probably a strong Blue holdout.
Wildcard: if Red States are panicking, they’re going to use stolen WMD.
And, remember, the entire post WW2 global liberal order will have collapsed so to add to what’s going on domestically in the United States, a number of limited nuclear exchanges will likely have happened.
This entire clusterfuck would be the Fourth Turning. A huge reset. What the endgame would ultimately be would be up to us, if we survive.
One reason why the American MAGA New Right is very, very dumb to crave a second civil war is they’re assuming that all such an event would be is nothing more than politics with the opportunity to use violence against liberals.
The MAGA New Right is so busy sucking its own cock that they forget something: once things become existential for both sides the state of play is dramatically different. A lot of the dumber “woke” shit that Leftist spout off about would suddenly evaporate. It’s hard to be a trustafarian when your family is staring down the barrel of a gun.
That’s probably the single biggest strategic miscalculation of the MAGA New Right — they glorify political violence, blame liberals for “forcing” them to engage in it because they assume the center-Left is made up of a bunch of transgenderd soyboys who will be easy to get rid of. This goes against all of human existence: even the most fey of people are going to fight back extremely hard if their lives depend on it.
That’s why, it’s in the interests of the MAGA New Right to stop being such crybabies and to continue work within the confines of politics — all they have to do is be patient and they’ll get everything they want without firing a shot. I would compare it to Slave Power in 1861. If they had just stayed in the Union, they had probably could have kept their slaves a solid 10 more years at least.
Even the election of Lincoln was, on a political level, a very soft, general indication of political trends. But they South decided on war and they lost everything in a very violent manner.
So, too, could the MAGA New Right lose everything if they turn to organized political violence. Just sketching things out in my mind gives me a lot to work with if things become existential. Blue States have bigger economies, are more politically unified and have populations that are more concentrated. If the U.S. Military somehow collapses and you have essentially state- verse- state warfare without any central military, then California can easily on its own seize everything between it and the Blue States of the midwest with only Texas standing in its way.
America, 2021
But even Texas is shifting Blue and if an actual civil war started it might implode, especially once the state government radicalized and started some sort of “Final Solution” against POC.
And it’s because of how quickly Red States would realize what a huge mistake they had made by pushing us into violence that WMD would be seized and then we bomb ourselves into the stone age. Once WMD were used, everything would be taken to the next level with both sides growing far, far more radical than they ever imagined.
It would be a huge, historic reset not only in the United States, but the entire world. Everything would change, nothing would stay the same. So, it’s best if we just don’t do that, ok? Let’s not start killing each other for political reasons? Please?
But I fear I’m wasting my breath. Just like how war was glorified in Europe leading up to World War 1, so, too, does the MAGA New Right glorify the prospect of a Second American Civil War.
Sooner or later, because the Republican Party on an systemic, essential basis is nothing more than modern “Slave Power” we’re going to either live under its jackboot or destroy it.
Now, a number of NeverTrumpers talk about this need to destroy the Republican Party, but they always talk about it in an extremely abstract, rhetorical fashion. And, for the time being, that’s probably the best course of action. But when such MAGA New Right “thought leaders” like Jesse Kelly and the talking heads of FOX News’ primetime up pretty much say we’re headed towards political violence — and it’s all liberals’ fault — something’s gotta give.
Again, let me be absolutely clear — I hate violence. I hate guns. All of my ranting here is done in sort of a “psychohistory” way. I’m looking at general, macro political, economic and demographic trends and making a pretty obvious conclusion — we’re fucked. And, because I absolutely refuse to let a tool like Jesse Kelly intimidate me, I’m calling his bluff. He’s not going to blame ME for the political violence HE glorifies.
I have seen how abstract fears about — essentially — “replacement theory” on the part of the MAGA New Right are destroying our liberal democracy and I feel forced to make my own abstract fears concrete. Hence, my obsessive “doom shit” about the looming existential choice of autocracy or civil war.
I also love scenarios so thinking up the specifics of how we might either peacefully transition into an autocracy or find ourselves destroying the Republican Party as part of a civil war is definitely my bailiwick. So any suggestion of violence is strictly wargaming. I’m a man of ideas and to me running a wargame about how we might defeat Trumplandia is just part and parcel of that.
Anyway, back to the point — there is going to come a point where just like during the Civil War slave power pushed us to the breaking point and ultimately caused its own destruction, so, too, is it likely that if the MAGA New Right doesn’t turn us into a Russian-style managed democracy that we (e.g. Blue States) are pushed into a historical corner and we have to destroy them on the field of battle.
And let me stress – I don’t want any political violence and I sure as fuck don’t want a civil war. Unlike the MAGA New Right fucktards I actually am aware of how fucking horrific a civil war would be. It would be massive, epic tragedy that would likely leave billions dead because the entire post-WW2 liberal order would collapse and WW3 would happen.
But on a macro historical level, I just don’t see how we don’t avoid either autocracy or civil war. And if those are my choices, I won’t say I “pick” civil war, but that’s the high risk, high potential reward option that is a lot better than living under an autocracy. The reason why all of this is personal for me is I’m a loudmouth kook and I know that having the luxury of living in a free country like the United States has been — to date — is the only reason why I can rant about what a fucking cocksucker Mike Pompeo is without risk of being pushed out a window by ICE. (I talk about this a lot, I know, but it’s just a rhetorical flourish. A running gag, if you will.)
Any time you’re talking about leaving politics behind and settling things but killing people for ideological reasons, oh boy. War is hell and unpredictable and should be avoided at all costs. But, if I HAVE to think about it, the Blue States are a lot like the North — it might take a little while for them to get their shit together, but in the end they can vanquish their rival vision of America. A lot would depend, of course, on what California did.
If it simply leaves the Union at the onset of a Second American Civil War, then, lulz, welcome to Trumplandia.
It’s times like these where I wish I went to Harvard and worked at VOX so I could get paid to figure out what to tell you to do at this point. As it is, I’m at a loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.